


Click. Whirr.

by lalejandra



Category: lotrips
Genre: M/M, Pre-Slash, Transformative Works Welcome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-12-07
Updated: 2003-12-07
Packaged: 2019-07-14 11:26:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16039547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalejandra/pseuds/lalejandra
Summary: Life is about focus. If you aren't focused, you miss what's going on. Sometimes the focus is through a panoramic lens, and sometimes through a microscopic zoom.





	Click. Whirr.

Viggo sees the world through a lens. Nothing exists but what he's focused on. The questions are as follows:

1\. How should this shot be framed?  
2\. Where is the light coming from?  
3\. What is the meaning of life?  
4\. F-stop, shutter speed, go?

These are the questions Viggo always asks, whatever he is focused on. These are the questions Viggo asks when his camera is pointed at Henry, at Orlando, at Elijah, at Exene. These are the questions Viggo asks when his paintbrush is poised above a canvas. These are the questions Viggo asks before he gives or denies permission to Henry to do something, even just pour him another cup of coffee. These are the questions Viggo asks the poetry scrawled on a napkin, the word he wrote in the snow on PJ's car, the picture he is dodging and burning to make Elijah's eyes pop out of the smoke of the cigarette. These are the questions Viggo asks before accepting a role in a movie, and the questions he asks before stepping into character on-set.

Life is about focus. If you aren't focused, you miss what's going on. Sometimes the focus is through a panoramic lens, and sometimes through a microscopic zoom. Focusing is tricky, and it takes a lot of work, and it's hard to know what sort of lens to use, how to exactly encompass everything he'd need to know, how to figure out what else is affecting the situation and why, and what _is_ the meaning of life? If the meaning of life is moving forward, then all Viggo needs to do is calculate how fast he should move forward in order to get to where he needs to be at the time he needs to be there. Then, click, whirr, take the picture, do it.

It works particularly well for sporting events, concerts, art gallery openings, movie premieres, and early calls. It works less well on Henry, puppies who need to piddle, the capturing of any moment using the particular media at his disposal, and extricating himself from love triangles. It works the least well on Orlando and Sean and Sean and Elijah and Liv and Miranda and PJ and Sir Ian and John and Dom and Billy and—well. It almost didn't work at all on any of them, because they were unpredictable, and despite what he's read in magazines, they weren't at all intimidated or awed by him. It also did not work on his horse.

Focus worked on Aragorn the Second, Son of Arathorn, Ranger of the North, particularly since Viggo knew how Aragorn's story was going to end, even though Aragorn did not. Focus also worked _for_ Aragorn, on Legolas and Gimli and Boromir, and once on Haldir. Boromir was first, and Viggo had to adjust his focus on Aragorn because of it. Who knew what the characters were doing between the lines in Tolkien's manuscript? Switching lenses helped, and suddenly Aragorn fell into focus. Viggo could hear the noise in his head—click. Whirr.

The only exception was Haldir; that was surreal and unexpected for Viggo, who himself didn't find Craig to be all that attractive. Aragorn overruled him and pushed Haldir into a dark corner of Helm's Deep and Viggo had to adjust his focus again, to take into account characters having a life of their own; to take into account Aragorn having a will of his own outside Viggo's birth of him. When Sir Ian gravely commented that Viggo was certainly a method actor, Viggo only smiled and bought the man another pint. Elijah looked confused that night, but confusion was a good look for him, and if he hadn't been almost Henry's age, Viggo might have adjusted his focus to include Elijah as well.

It was after Aragorn's encounter with Legolas that Viggo took the now-famous photograph of Orlando putting in his contacts. Perhaps those without Viggo's lenses thought Legolas was inside Orlando, or that Legolas was a costume put on, and a wig. But Viggo knew that blue eyes meant grace and strength and unforgivably flexible legs, while brown eyes meant a quick smile and clumsy feet and a mouth too thin to really be considered attractive.

Viggo didn't have that problem. He made himself into Aragorn and Aragorn into himself, and he, at least, didn't do a piss poor job, even if sometimes he was unhappy with the result. The overlay of Aragorn into Viggo's own life shifted all his focus a bit; switched up his lenses. He still doesn't know how that will all turn out, but now it's over.

It's all over. The publicity and the premieres and the junkets and the conventions and the signings and the fans who call him Aragorn or Vehgoh. He no longer has to meet up with the people he dreadfully misses, or think about the fact that he's too young for the best years of his life to now be behind him. His focus is narrow again, back to himself and art and Henry. He does not write the emails he wants to write, say the right words to the people who have only ever heard the wrong ones, make the phone calls he wants to make, surround himself with the ones he didn't think he loved. His focus was off. Sometimes he'll receive a call from Liv or Sean or Dom, and meet them for drinks and listen to them talk about their lives and vet their new love interests, but most of the time he sits and stares at canvases or blank sheets of paper.

There are no moments to catch, no pieces of life he's noticed, no crown to fight for, no hobbits or elves to poke at with his sword. Meant literally, of course, not as a metaphor for anything else. He's uncomfortable in his skin; jeans and T-shirts and short hair feel awkward knowing that he will never again have to wear Aragorn's leathers, wool, or wig; bare feet are hindering. He wakes up in the middle of the night gasping, grasping for his sword to kill the orc that's snuck up on him, but it's just a dream. His memories are fading away; all he has are the pictures and paintings and scraps of poetry, and the scar on his thigh where Gimli bit Aragorn just a little too hard.

Viggo doesn't think it fair that his body must carry Aragorn's history.

If Henry notices that he's been quieter lately, the boy hasn't said anything. He's wise beyond his years; reminds Viggo a lot of Elijah and the blue eyes that saw too much in forests and caverns and behind trailers, but understood nothing. So Viggo sits. And stares. And thinks. And sorts desperately through lenses, trying to regain his balance. He scratches desperately at his tattoo and succeeds in drawing blood, and uses it to trace the One Ring onto the blank canvas. He absorbs the quiet, but can't stop drinking coffee or crumpling up pages on which no words had been written in days.

He takes up baking cookies, keeping meticulous track of recipes and oven temperature variations and widths and heights of dough, both pre- and post-baked. As he's carefully detaching cookie number one thousand fifty six from the parchment paper, Henry quietly suggests that he try entrees, or at least appetizers, something useful. Viggo pulls out the Polaroid camera he purchased online, and snaps a picture of his last batch of cookies. A click, but no whirr. Peanut butter and banana, with granulated sugar on top. Viggo had never used a Polaroid camera before, but couldn't bear to be in the darkroom with photographs that weren't of New Zealand. Sometimes, he thinks when he takes pictures with the camera and they fade up slowly, that his life is like a Polaroid, and it just hasn't faded up yet. It's been tucked into someone's dark pocket for developing later.

Viggo starts on appetizers. He's going to work his way through the McCall's cookbook that his mother had in the seventies. The cover is blue, and there are no recipes that call for bread machines. He gives the food away to the local shelter and signs some autographs while he's at it. Some of it is disgusting; there are things that just aren't meant to be made with meat substitutes. Henry refuses to eat it all, and finally one day packed his bags and said, "I'm going to stay with Mum. Sort this out, Dad, before you end up talking to yourself on a street corner."

Viggo always worried that he wasn't a good father, but he tells himself this isn't proof one way or the other. Exene isn't a better mother than he is a father; she's just not a barking loon.

Two days after Henry left, Elijah arrives with two cases of American beer in a suitcase and a knapsack. Stuck in his mouth is one of the filthy cigarettes he insists on smoking, and in his hand is a Canon EOS. The Rebel 2000, if Viggo isn't mistaken.

"I thought I would try focusing," says Elijah.

"That camera isn't meant for focusing. It's meant for glamour shots. With a lot of lights and makeup." Viggo thinks about what Elijah would look like in glitter, the light refracting off every surface of his skin, breaking into pieces. He lifts the Polaroid camera from its strap around his neck and takes a picture as Elijah lets out a cloud of sweetly-scented smoke. "It takes pictures of what's not there." Like my sanity.

"Henry called me and told me that you had over a thousand cookies in your freezer that nobody was eating." Elijah snapped a picture of Viggo in turn—click; whirr—and pushes past him into the house. "I was the only hobbit available to answer this cry for help."

Viggo closed the door behind Elijah, leaves the picture on the counter to develop, and takes another one, this time of his face in profile. He's wearing the ugliest brown corduroy jacket that Viggo has ever seen, including the ones all his professors wore thirty years ago with the plaid patches over the elbows. Elijah's letting his hair grow out, grow long, and Viggo does not ask the question on his lips about new projects and new loves.

"Well?"

"What?"

"Where are the cookies?"

Viggo raises his eyebrows but leads Elijah into the kitchen. He pulls out a saucer he never really liked anyway and fills it with water for Elijah to ash into. He knows better than to tell Elijah not to smoke, especially when Elijah jiggles his legs while he's sitting. He's left the Canon in a heap on top of his knapsack, the black pack of cloves on top of it, gold Zippo on top of that. Viggo can barely see what's inscribed on the Zippo, but knows the Black Speech words by heart:

_ash nazg thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimptaul_

Viggo is clearly not the only one having trouble moving on.

He pulls some of the chocolate chip cookies out of his freezer, arranges them on parchment paper, and puts them into the oven. Elijah is tapping his fingers on the table, bouncing his knees, puffing away. Viggo pours him a mug of coffee. Three sugars, no milk. The heated-up cookies slide easily onto a plate, and the noise Viggo's bare feet make on the tiled floor is loud in Elijah's silence.

"I thought I'd stay here for a while," he says around a mouthful of cookie.

"Good idea," says Viggo, and leaves the room. He comes back moments later with his Hasselblad, the first time he's touched it in weeks. "Take off your shirt."

Elijah doesn't even look surprised, just sets down his coffee and cigarette and strips. First the jacket, then the black button down with satin stripes, then the CBGB's T-shirt and the long-sleeved grey shirt under it at the same time. He still has no chest hair, Viggo notices, and barely any hair under or on his arms. And he's clean shaven. He looks the same as he did the day Viggo met him, except his eyes are darker.

"Go ahead." Viggo motioned at the cookies.

Elijah picked his cigarette back up, puffed, bit into a cookie, took a sip of coffee—and there. That was what Viggo wanted. Coffee cup and cigarette in one hand, cookie in the other, wisdom in his eyes, a smile on his mouth; innocence warring with time and wear.

Focus. Red mouth. Watery afternoon light coming in from the window in front of Viggo; push up the exposure time. What is the meaning of life? A cookie crumb, a pink nipple. Click. Whirr.

Focus. Smirk and cigarette. Darker than it was a moment ago, shadows. What is the meaning of life? A bare foot on a chair, a sneaker kicked off, brown smoke. Click. Whirr.

Focus. Wide shot, step back. Boy on chair, half in shadow, cigarette burning, pale and hairless feet almost covered by blue jeans, stomach folding, cookie in mouth, bitten nails, stubby fingers, blue ceramic mug. Wide, knowing eyes. What is the meaning of life? Elijah. Click. Whirr.

  



End file.
